Steelman ran his eye meditatively over the cutting again, and turning to Smith said:
“Go up there, James, and fetch me a specimen of that slaty outcrop you see there—just above the coeval strata.”
It was a stiff climb and slippery, but Smith had to do it, and he did it.
“This,” said Steelman, breaking the rotten piece between his fingers, “belongs probably to an older geological period than its position would indicate—a primitive sandstone level perhaps. Its position on that layer is no doubt due to volcanic upheavals—such disturbances, or rather the results of such disturbances, have been and are the cause of the greatest trouble to geologists—endless errors and controversy. You see we must study the country, not as it appears now, but as it would appear had the natural geological growth been left to mature undisturbed; we must restore and reconstruct such disorganized portions of the mineral kingdom, if you understand me.”
The boss said he understood.
Steelman found an opportunity to wink sharply and severely at Smith, who had been careless enough to allow his features to relapse into a vacant grin.
“It is generally known even amongst the ignorant that rock grows—grows from the outside—but the rock here, a specimen of which I hold in my hand, is now in the process of decomposition; to be plain it is rotting—in an advanced stage of decomposition—so much so that you are not able to identify it with any geological period or formation, even as you may not be able to identify any other extremely decomposed body.”
The boss blinked and knitted his brow, but had the presence of mind to say: “Just so.”
“Had the rock on that cutting been healthy—been alive, as it were—you would have had your work cut out; but it is dead and has been dead for ages perhaps. You find less trouble in working it than you would ordinary clay or sand, or even gravel, which formations together are really rock in embryo—before birth as it were.”
The boss’s brow cleared.